I’m obsessed with eggplant, but I’m not so crazy about how much oil one often must use to cook the vegetable properly.
It’s difficult, really, to find aubergine recipes that transform the purple bulbs into the veritable butter of the vegetable kingdom (hey leave me alone, avocados are fruits) without at least a quart of oil per square-inch-cube of eggplant.
Grilling, sure, but it’s so crass; delicious maybe, but there’s no transcendence in eating charred vegetables. (email me at angelatchou@gmail.com to prove me wrong.)
(more photos and recipe after the jump!)
I have an adorable friend in San Francisco (hey Maddy!) who sympathizes with me. So much so, that she sent over a handwritten recipe for Baba Ghanouj just in time for eggplant season!
So I nabbed a big discount bag of fairy tale eggplants at the farmer’s market last Sunday and split it in two. One half to try out Maddy’s Baba Ghanouj and the other to make an heirloom of a recipe that’s been passed down in my family for generations.
Let me tell you. This Baba Ghanouj is awesome. Eat it on tortilla chips, on a salad or off the blender blades. It’s just garlicky enough and neither tahini nor eggplant get overpowered.
So I’ll give you the recipe for Maddy’s Baba Ghanouj today. But only if you stick around for the sexiest eggplant recipe of all time on Thursday.
(A digression: I read yesterday that Chinese brides were once required to have twelve eggplant recipes in their dowry before they could be deemed suitable for marriage. I’m Chinese, and I know most of those dishes. And while they’re absolutely heavenly, they will make you fat. I’ve only got these two eggplant recipes so far, because well, I’d rather be skinny than married.)
Baba Ghanouj
adapted from my good friend Maddy who adapted it from Get it Ripe
1 1/2 pounds of eggplant (any kind)
3 Tbsp of tahini
2 Tbspn of lavender, chopped (or, whatever, i just had lavender in my backyard. otherwise, parsley, thyme, basil, it’s whatevs)
1/4 cup of lemon juice
2 cloves of garlic, minced
Salt and ground pepper to taste
1.Preheat oven to 500 degrees, line a baking sheet with aluminum foil
2. Poke skin of eggplant all over with a fork (don’t be shy, it feels like you’re stabbing little fingers, which is pretty soothing after a long day in the cubicle)
4. Place eggplants on baking sheet
3. Stick the eggplant in the oven and take the baking sheet out every 10 minutes or so and squeeze the eggplants with tongs to check when they get soft. (Depending on your eggplants, this can take anywhere from 25 to 60 minutes. It only took me 20 because my eggplants were so small)
4. When soft, remove, cool, lengthwise. Scoop out flesh into a blender and process with other ingredients until smooth. Adjust seasonings. (I found that I wanted a lot more lemon juice and salt.)
5. I ate it warm from the blender, but if you transfer the dip to a container and keep it in the fridge. Well, I’m sure that would work out too.
